Weisgall, Hugo D. (13072714): Difference between revisions

|birth_place=Ivančice, Moravia, Austria-Hungary

|photo=5776030372418836.jpg

'''[[Weisgall, Hugo D. (13072714)|Hugo David Weisgall]]''' (13 October 1912 – 11 March 1997) was a Moravia-born composer and Ritchie Boy (Class 2) who conducted Allied musical forces in Britain and later wrote major American operas.

Hugo David Weisgall was born on 13 October 1912 in Ivančice (Eibenschütz), Moravia, then in Austria-Hungary. His family emigrated to Baltimore in 1920; he became a U.S. citizen in 1926. He studied at the Peabody Conservatory and the Curtis Institute, earned a Ph.D. in German literature at Johns Hopkins University (1940), and led ensembles including the Baltimore String Symphony.

Weisgall trained at Camp Ritchie (Class 2). A 1943 newspaper report identifies him as a technical sergeant assigned to London as a liaison between the United States and governments in exile. While serving in the Army he conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra at Royal Albert Hall on 29 July 1943 before an audience of about 6,000 for the premiere of his overture ''American Comedy 1943'', which he had begun while training at Camp Ritchie—reportedly the first time an American had conducted the BBC orchestra in its promenade-concert series.

After the war he served as an assistant cultural officer in Prague (Foreign Service, from November 1946). Weisgall became one of the leading American opera composers of his generation—works include ''The Tenor'', ''The Stronger'', ''Six Characters in Search of an Author'', and ''Esther''—and taught at the Jewish Theological Seminary, Juilliard, and Queens College. He died on 11 March 1997 on Long Island, New York.